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“This happened, and it was always going to end up this way. It’s been nearly a year since he bit me. You’ve had time to adjust to the new reality.”

“How could you have done this, Opal?” I said. “How could you? We were best friends.”

“You don’t get everything,” said Opal.

“Everything? I have nothing now. You have everything.”

“Well, it was kind of a winner-take-all situation, you know? And maybe he just never wanted you.”

“What?”

“Would he have been so easy to seduce if he’d really been that devoted to you? And this baby he put in me, Leo, how do you think that got there? He’s mine now, and you need to let him go.”

I sputtered. I couldn’t believe she was talking to me this way. We hadn’t done a lot of talking since the incident, admittedly. “He wants you?” I said. “If that’s so true, why did you have to get pregnant and trap him? Why wasn’t getting his bite enough?”

“You know how he is,” she said. “He feels really guilty and really responsible. He’s been pity-fucking you for months now. He doesn’t think you can live without him.” Her voice had gone mocking.

“That’s not true.”

“I told him it’s better for you to make a clean break. And I need him. The baby needs him. And his place is here, as the future cyning of the pack, along with his cwen. You are part of his past, Leo. I am his future.”

“You could have any man you wanted, Opal,” I said.

“What?” She was genuinely surprised.

“You did not have to take him from me. You did not have to do that.”

“Yes, I did,” hissed Opal through the phone line. “I absolutely had to have him, and I got him, didn’t I? If you’d been a little more interesting, Leo, maybe you could have kept him.”

And then she hung up on me.

I remember the days after that conversation, that it hurt worse than losing Damian somehow. I had somehow not realized that Opal had done this because she hated me. I hadn’t thought a lot about Opal, not really, not with the bond sickness and trying to find a way to make my relationship with Damian work.

I was hurt. I felt angry with her.

But I hadn’t given her state of mind or motivation a great deal of thought.

And now I realized she had hurt me, and she had liked it, and I had never been subjected to that, not on this scale. Sure, maybe as a kid, someone took my toy and was gleeful about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t know it was an ugly part of humanity or something.

But my best friend. Took my boyfriend on purpose and taunted me about how I couldn’t keep him.

I walked around in a haze for days, feeling like this could not be real life.

It was funny. At the beginning of her little manifesto, she had written that she was not a cartoon.

But she’d seemed like a cartoon in that conversation. The sheer extremeness of her cruelty had seemed too raw and too bold to really be happening.

OPAL

I ALWAYS WONDER if Damian is different in bed with me than he was with you. I know, maybe that’s a fucked up thing to think about, but I do wonder about it. I guess I’ll never really know, because you and I won’t talk.

But think what a conversation that could be, like we were sister wives or something, comparing notes on his clit licking technique.

To be honest, I do have to say that I think you taught him well. I know that when I got him, you were the only other woman he’d ever been with, and he has some good tricks. That thing he does where he grabs the whole front of you and tucks one finger down to play with your clit while he uses his whole hand to tease you? You taught him that, right? It’s, um, wow. Phenomenal.

I want to write to you about our life together after you left it.

I want to tell you that he was relieved after he ended things with you, and I know that will hurt you to hear, but I think this is something you need to do for him when I’m gone. You need to convince him to leave things be sometimes. He feels responsible for everything, but some things are better off without his interference.